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Villa La AngosturaHeartandhavoc

The Heartandhavoc Room

This is a room of this lodge. Nobody else runs it, it has no address of its own, and the walk to it stays indoors. The casino occupies the lower floor that Parques Nacionales built as a store, directly beneath the hall you walked into.

From the desk you cross the hall, take the stair at the back between the kitchen and the gallery, and go down six steps. Thirty-five paces in total and not one of them outdoors, which between June and September is the difference between going and not going. That door has somebody behind it from opening until closing, and there is no other way in.

The stone wall and counter of the lower floor room
Main floor plan with the walk from the desk The entrance leads to the hall. The desk stands on the right of the hall. The stair to the lower floor opens off the back of the hall, between the kitchen and the gallery, and the gaming room is directly below it. Entrance Hall and desk Kitchen Gallery Stair down to the gaming room inside the building the whole way
From the desk to the head of the stair, drawn on the main floor.
  • HoursThursday to Monday, eight until half past twelve
  • SizeFour tables and a bar with three stools
  • Age18, photographic document, checked every visit
  • DressDry boots. That is the whole rule.

The room

Four tables is what fits and four is what the casino will ever hold. On a Thursday in May two are open. Through January all four are, and on those nights people are counted through the casino door, the fire figure for the room being thirty-eight.

It was a boat store, so it is stone on three sides and poured concrete underfoot, with a fall to a drain that is still there under a grating. The ceiling is the underside of the main floor: cypress joists, visible, with the mark of the old hoist rail across two of them. There is no music. The loudest thing is the extractor. The casino keeps a clock on the stone wall opposite the stair, and the staff are told to give you the time the moment you ask, which is the opposite of what a gaming room is supposed to do.

The dress rule is dry boots, and it has to be stated because the shore path is 900 metres away and people come straight back up it. Nobody has been turned away for anything else.

Age and identification

In Argentina the casino age stands at 18 and this door applies it with nothing waived for anybody, a guest one floor above included.

The document is checked at each visit and not once per stay. That includes the guest who ate in the kitchen an hour earlier and spoke to the same person then. A passport, a DNI, or a national driving licence is accepted. A DNI photographed on a telephone counts for nothing at this door, and that has never once been negotiable.

At no hour whatever does anybody under 18 pass into the casino, and that covers the hours the room is shut and being swept, and covers coming down to see the old hoist rail. If somebody wants to see it, we will show them the drawing on this page.

Limits and stopping

Limits are set on the casino floor by the people working it. Name your number before sitting and it goes on the sheet and is kept to. Ask them to propose one and they will, and they will propose it low.

Stopping is arranged in person at the desk upstairs, never on the casino floor, never by telephone and never by message. The self-exclusion is written out at that desk, holds from that night, and is undone only by coming back to it yourself. Nobody downstairs can lift it and nobody downstairs will try.

There is no credit of any kind, and there is no cash machine on this property: not on the lower floor, not in the hall, not in the woodshed. The nearest one is in the village, seven kilometres west, and the last bus back passes at eight.

No gaming is offered from here

What stands at kilometre 62 of Route 231 is a casino room on the lower floor of a hotel. Nothing about it is online and nothing about it is anywhere else. The site describes a building and a room inside it. It plays nothing, banks nothing, holds nothing and transfers nothing.

To play you drive or walk to kilometre 62, show a document at the door at the foot of the stair, and sit down. No other entrance exists, and nothing described here takes place on a screen.